In his new book, Michael J. Hogan, a leading historian of the American presidency, offers a new perspective on John Fitzgerald Kennedy, as seen not from his life and times but from his afterlife in American memory. The Afterlife of John Fitzgerald Kennedy considers how Kennedy constructed a popular image of himself, in effect, a brand, as he played the part of president on the White House stage. The cultural trauma brought on by his assassination further burnished that image and began the process of transporting Kennedy from history to memory. Hogan shows how Jacqueline Kennedy, as the chief guardian of her husband's memory, devoted herself to embedding the image of the slain president in the collective memory of the nation, evident in the many physical and literary monuments dedicated to his memory. Regardless of critics, most Americans continue to see Kennedy as his wife wanted him remembered: the charming war hero, the loving husband and father, and the peacemaker and progressive leader who inspired confidence and hope in the American people.

New perspectives on Anglo-Jewish history via the poetry and song of Yiddish-speaking immigrants in London from 1884 to 1914. Archive material from the London Yiddish press, songbooks, and satirical writing offers a window into an untold cultural life of the Yiddish East End. Whitechapel Noise: Jewish Immigrant Life in Yiddish Song and Verse, London 1884-1914 by Vivi Lachs positions London's Yiddish popular culture in historical perspective within Anglo-Jewish history, English socialist aesthetics, and music-hall culture, and shows its relationship to the transnational Yiddish-speaking world. Layers of cultural references in the Yiddish texts are closely analysed and quoted to draw out the complex yet intimate histories they contain, offering new perspectives on Anglo-Jewish historiography in three main areas: politics, sex, and religion. The acculturation of Jewish immigrants to English life is an important part of the development of their social culture, as well as to the history of London. In the first part of the book, Lachs presents an overview of daily immigrant life in London, its relationship to the Anglo-Jewish establishment, and the development of a popular Yiddish theatre and press, establishing a context from which these popular texts came. The author then analyzes the poems and songs, revealing the hidden social histories of the people writing and performing them. Lachs also explores how themes of marriage, relationships, and sexual exploitation appear regularly in music-hall songs, alluding to the changing nature of sexual roles in the immigrant London community influenced by the cultural mores of their new location. In the theme of religion, Lachs examines how ideas from Jewish texts and practice were used and manipulated by the socialist poets to advance ideas about class, equality, and revolution; and satirical writings offer glimpses into how the practice of religion and growing secularization was changing immigrants' daily lives in the encounter with modernity. The detailed and nuanced analysis found in Whitechapel Noise offers a new reading of Anglo-Jewish, London, and immigrant history. It is a must-read for Jewish and Anglo-Jewish historians and those interested in Yiddish, London, and migration studies.

In the wake of 9/11, the United States government rediscovered the value of culture in international relations, sending cultural ambassadors around the world to promote the American way of life. This is the most recent effort to use American culture as a means to convince others that the United States is a land of freedom, equality, opportunity, and scientific and cultural achievements to match its material wealth and military prowess. In The History of United States Cultural Diplomacy Michael Krenn charts the history of the cultural diplomacy efforts from Benjamin Franklin's service as commissioner to France in the 1770s through to the present day. He explores how these efforts were sometimes inspiring, often disastrous, and nearly always controversial attempts to tell the 'truth' about America. This is the first comprehensive study of America's efforts in the field of cultural diplomacy. It reveals a dynamic conflict between those who view U.S. culture as a means to establish meaningful dialogues with the rest of the world and those who consider American art, music, theater as additional propaganda weapons.

This book is an interdisciplinary study aimed at re-imagining and re-routing contemporary migrations in the Mediterranean. Drawing from visual arts, citizenship studies, film, media and cultural studies, along with postcolonial, border, and decolonial discourses, and examining the issues from within a human rights framework, the book investigates how works of cultural production can offer a more complex and humane understanding of mobility in the Mediterranean beyond representations of illegality and/or crisis. Elvira Pulitano centers the discourse of cultural production around the island of Lampedusa but expands the island geography to include a digital multi-media project, a social enterprise in Palermo, Sicily, and overall reflections on race, identity, and belonging inspired by Toni Morrison's guest-curated Louvre exhibit The Foreigner's Home. Responding to recent calls for alternative methodologies in thinking the modern Mediterranean, Pulitano disseminates a fluid archive of contemporary migrations reverberating with ancestral sounds and voices from the African diaspora along a Mediterranean-TransAtlantic map. Adding to the recent proliferation of social science scholarship that has drawn attention to the role of artistic practice in migration studies, the book features human stories of endurance and survival aimed at enhancing knowledge and social justice beyond (and notwithstanding) militarized borders and failed EU policies.

The stories of the Cherokee people presented here capture in written form tales of history, myth, and legend for readers, speakers, and scholars of the Cherokee language. Assembled by noted authorities on Cherokee, this volume marks an unparalleled contribution to the linguistic analysis, understanding, and preservation of Cherokee language and culture. Cherokee Narratives spans the spectrum of genres, including humor, religion, origin myths, trickster tales, historical accounts, and stories about the Eastern Cherokee language. These stories capture the voices of tribal elders and form a living record of the Cherokee Nation and Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians' oral tradition. Each narrative appears in four different formats: the first is interlinear, with each line shown in the Cherokee syllabary, a corresponding roman orthography, and a free English translation; the second format consists of a morpheme-by-morpheme analysis of each word; and the third and fourth formats present the entire narrative in the Cherokee syllabary and in a free English translation. The narratives and their linguistic analysis are a rich source of information for those who wish to deepen their knowledge of the Cherokee syllabary, as well as for students of Cherokee history and culture. By enabling readers at all skill levels to use and reconstruct the Cherokee language, this collection of tales will sustain the life and promote the survival of Cherokee for generations to come.

This book investigates the interplay between media, politics, religion, and culture in shaping Arabs' quest for more stable and democratic governance models in the aftermath of the "Arab Spring" uprisings. It focuses on online mediated public debates, specifically user comments on online Arab news sites, and their potential to re-engage citizens in politics. Contributors systematically explore and critique these online communities and spaces in the context of the Arab uprisings, with case studies, largely centered on Egypt, covering micro-bloggers, Islamic discourse online, Libyan nationalism on Facebook, and a computational assessment of online engagement, among other topics.

Focusing on a decade in Irish history which has been largely overlooked, Youth and Popular Culture in 1950s Ireland provides the most complete account of the 1950s in Ireland, through the eyes of the young people who contributed, slowly but steadily, to the social and cultural transformation of Irish society. Eleanor O'Leary presents a picture of a generation with an international outlook, who played basketball, read comic books and romance magazines, listened to rock'n'roll music and skiffle, made their own clothes to mimic international styles and even danced in the street when the major stars and bands of the day rocked into town. She argues that this engagement with imported popular culture was a contributing factor to emigration and the growing dissatisfaction with standards of living and conservative social structures in Ireland. As well as outlining teenagers' resistance to outmoded forms of employment and unfair work practices, she maps their vulnerability as a group who existed in a limbo between childhood and adulthood. Issues of unemployment, emigration and education are examined alongside popular entertainments and social spaces in order to provide a full account of growing up in the decade which preceded the social upheaval of the 1960s. Examining the 1950s through the unique prism of youth culture and reconnecting the decade to the process of social and cultural transition in the second half of the 20th century, this book is a valuable contribution to the literature on 20th-century Irish history.

Diary of a Muslim Nobody attempts to reach out to society as a whole, regardless of affiliations and the social constructs of the labels we place ourselves in, with the intention to reach out to the commonality of the human experience. Interweaving between personal reflections of the human experience and commentary of global issues with touches of affection & humour through his relationship with his parents, Reaz attempts to demonstrate the multiplicity of experiences as we live our everyday lives. "I have always been very aware of the power of language and the potential of its impact upon our own selves as individuals, our relationships and interactions and indeed our perceptions. Perhaps the intrinsic relationship between our language and humankind may be best understood when we consider letters, by themselves, important in their own entity and when placed together becoming even more powerful to become words - giving them substance and meaning. In this instance, human beings may be aligned to letters - each important within our right and when we recognise our own value, we are then able to understand this in context to our relationship to one another. In that moment we are able to have the most profound and positive of impact in our own lives and in the lives of others around us." As featured by: BBC LONDON, British Muslim Magazine, I am HipHop Magazine & Asian Image.

This multi-disciplinary volume is one of the few collections about social change covering various cases of mass violence and genocide. In life under persecution, social relations and social structures were not absent and not simply replaced by an ethno-racial order. The studies in this book show the influence of social structures like gender, age and class on life under persecution. Exploring practices in family and labor relations and of collective action, they counter claims of an atomization of society or total uprootedness of victims. Despite being exposed to poverty and want and under the permanent threat of political violence, persecuted people tried to develop their own agency. Case studies are about the Jewish and Armenian persecutions, Rwanda, the war of decolonization in Mozambique and civilian refuges in Belarus during World War II. The authors are a mix of experienced scholars and young researchers.